178.0 The Spirit Piece

Within the posts of this blog I have often referred to Jennifer Scott, my spiritual and clinical hypnotherapist, and the impact she has had on my life, both with the weight loss and spiritual awakening. Jennifer just wrote an ebook called That's The Spirit. Go to Amazon kindle and put in Jennifer Scott That's The Spirit and check it out. And yes, there is a bit about me in it :). I am quite awestruck that she was able to do this and had the courage to share her story!

Moving here was such a shot in the dark and yet I marvel at all the wonderful people I have met out here. It really wasn't a shot in the dark. I believe I am exactly where I am meant to be, and am living a very exciting life, one I had never dreamed of.

170.6 How Did I Do It?

I'm thinking a lot about how I did this, how I lost 80 pounds. Jennifer Scott wants to make a video with me talking about how I did it. First of all, I couldn't have done it without her wisdom, patience, and skill as a hypno-therapist. I wasn't easy to work with. I was pretty stubborn, stuck in my old beliefs about all sorts of things. In other words, I was a hard sell. Opening my mind to her views was work for both of us, thankfully often humorous, but work. We both hung in there together, fastened our seat belts and took every twist and turn on this journey together.

So, how did I do it? The quick answer is one bite at a time. It was one meal at a time, one day at a time, one pound at a time. I didn't just drop 5 pounds here, and 3 pounds a couple days later, etc. This was purposefully slow so that my mind would change along with my body. The quick weight loss diets I'd done earlier had produced weight loss, but no understanding of why I ate what I ate, drank what I drank, and put on that weight. So, it was the mental, emotional work that accompanied the careful eating that made this a very unusual journey.

And then there is the spiritual piece that I hadn't expected but evolved as I worked with Jennifer. She introduced me to the idea that God's power resides in all of us and can be understood once we move our ego issues aside and listen to that voice within us that gives guidance, comfort and support. This played a huge part in my changing attitudes and moving from the old to the new, and I am so grateful to Jennifer for sharing these ideas with me.

I'm still not sure what I'll say in that video, but at least I've got a head start on thinking about it after writing this.

179.4 What Are The Rules?

I've always been a great rule follower. I've been thinking about this whole weight loss journey, and how there have been some rules, like eating 1/2 the usual portion size, and there have been no rules. When I first started seeing Jennifer Scott a couple of years ago, I kept waiting for her to ask me what I ate. She didn't ask, and finally I asked her if she didn't want to know. She didn't. She wanted me to eat smaller portions of what I wanted to eat so that I wouldn't feel deprived, and it has worked. She's made a lot of suggestions about behavioral changes like adding exercise, more exercise, and faster exercise :), but she's never laid down a formula or set of rules for me to follow. Because I have had to devise my own way of moving through this territory to reach my goal, I've discovered the roadblocks, the challenges that I have needed to overcome. She has suggested taking new and different paths like developing the spiritual side of my life, understanding and using hypnosis and self hypnosis, and each of those new paths have been exciting and often very challenging, but because I've done it and learned from figuring out how, the changes have evolved from within. Self understanding has been an unexpected gift resulting from this adventure, and I know that will be the foundation for maintenance once I reach my goal.

180.2 "Don't Ever Change!"

I still haven't found my senior class year book, but I have been looking at my sophomore class yearbook and reading all the handwritten messages left by classmates. The first obvious feature of those written messages (by girls) is the hearts dotting the i's, and the big, fat exclamation marks! The second is the common thread of "don't ever change", fat exclamation mark.

Why, when we were in high school was it so important to never change? Can you imagine the world populated with folks, no matter what their age, who never changed after they turned 15? I remember listening to the valedictorian's speech at one of my daughter's high school graduations and the theme was...don't change!

Hello! Life is all about change! Physical, intellectual, emotional, spiritual change is what life is all about. When I think of my life since I was 15 or 17, it is all about change. And, when I think about the past two years, CHANGE has been huge in my life. And, it has made my life richer, fuller, more fun, definitely more challenging, and it's been a remarkable time.

So when I arrive at this reunion, I am ready to be surrounded by changed people. I can hardly wait!

183.6 Finding The Real Me

Occasionally during the time I've been working with Jennifer we have made videos talking about my weight loss success. Yesterday we made the fourth one and it took a different turn than the others had. We didn't rehearse in any way this time since we had done the others. In the course of yesterday's video, Jennifer asked me how it felt to have lost all of the weight and how did it feel when I got compliments. To my surprise I talked about how hard it was because of my uncertainty about this new me in comparison to the fatter, old familiar me.

I had never really expressed it the way I did on the video and I think we were both surprised by what I said. This weight loss process isn't for sissies, I've decided. By taking the time to explore why I was eating so much and so often and then working on healing the causes of the overeating I've come a long way. But as yesterday's video shows, I'm still coming around to accepting my new look. Taking the weight off slowly has been an invaluable gift because I have become very different emotionally and spiritually as well as physically from the 247 pound gal who decided to find a clinical hypnotherapist to help with weight loss. Not only have I been losing the weight, but I've been finding the real me who was hidden for so long under all that fat! And, I'm not done yet. It's pretty exciting!

(Once the video has been edited, I'll add it to the blog.)